A Letter to All the Body’s I’ve Shamed

That is the beauty of this world. We are all unique, crazy, imperfect individuals just trying to do our best in life. Sometimes we make mistakes and in the process can hurt other people. When we start to notice the things that are happening around us, the untruths we’ve been conditioned to believe and the hurt that we’ve caused along the way, it can be really hard to accept that as a part of our lives. We want to forget it, bury it and move on.

But today I’m going to invite you all to forgive.

Forgive yourself for the choices you made and the words you said. Forgive those who taught you to believe something that you no longer know to be true. Forgive society for the conditioning and rules that are imprinted into our consciousness. Let us forgive and move on.

I now teach and share a message of full body acceptance and love. I empower women to see all the ways that they are beautiful beyond shape and size. But once upon a time I did not do those things.

I shamed women, I told them they weren’t good enough and I bullied their body’s.

Today I share my apology and my forgiveness.

To the girls at school who were all just trying to find their own way in the world, I’m sorry. We were all just trying to be accepted in a sea of torment and insecurities and somewhere in the process we learnt that the easiest way to be accepted was to hurt another person. I didn’t want to ridicule you then and I don’t want to ridicule you now. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I just wasn’t sure who I was and somewhere in the process of trying to find myself, I lost myself even more.

To the women on the street who I judged for the clothes they wore and the way they looked, I’m sorry. I’ve realised that each time I judge someone, I’m really just projecting my feelings about myself onto you. But you still do not deserve these thoughts and I now know not to send them your way. I promise to change my judging glares into loving compliments. I promise to look beneath the surface and see your beautiful shining soul.

To the people I worked with who had to listen to my diet talk for years on end and received my judgement for your own choices, I’m sorry. I had no right to tell you what you should or should not be eating and now know that your body is yours, what you choose to put in it is your choice. (I also promise to come up with more interesting things for us to talk about if we cross paths again!)

To the women closest to me who have supported me through sugar withdrawal symptoms, caffeine addiction and the tears upon tears I have shed over my weight, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to put up with my mood swings and try to work out what was going on with me when I had no words left to express it. I also want to say a huge thank you. You stuck by me, you allowed me to journey this road and you held my hand even when I couldn’t hold yours.

And lastly to myself. To the one person I have judged, hated, betrayed, ridiculed and abused more than any other person on this planet, I’m sorry. It amazes me how strong my body is; that even through all the torture and bullying I inflicted on myself, it still shows up for me, it still stays healthy and it still carries me through the day. I cannot begin to express the love and gratitude that I have for my body, she is truly the best and I don’t know where I would be without her.

This is probably the hardest post I have ever had to write. I’ve had to really stare in the face of the shadow side of me that I’ve pushed down and forgotten existed. I’ve remembered all the hurtful things I used to do and it’s not easy to do that. In fact, it’s absolutely terrifying to acknowledge the person that I used to be. But what I have found is that in order to truly forgive myself for the mistakes I’ve made, I had to allow myself to see those mistakes.

I’m not perfect and I have never claimed to be so. I am just a human trying to find my way in life. However I know more today than I did yesterday. I have made mistakes and I have forgiven myself for them.

Someone once told me that your initial reaction to a situation is what you have been conditioned to think, but your next thought is the one you get to choose and that reflects who you truly are.

My guess is that if you have read this post, you have resonated with an area of it. You too have judged or thought negatively about someone and in turn you have had it happen to you. What I want you to know today is that you can change that. You can forgive your initial reaction and you can choose your next thought, the thought the person you really are has. The next time you see someone you know or even a stranger on the street, take the time to notice who they really are and my hope is, that the next time you look in a mirror, you will be able to do that for yourself too.

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